Framed by the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges and set against the backdrop of lower Manhattan, Emilia and Ilya Kabakov’s Ship of Tolerance will grace the DUMBO waterfront until October 8th.

The pre-eminent feature of this 66-foot wooden vessel is its colorful sail, stitched together from paintings on 30” x 30” silk squares by New York City public elementary school students. The paintings express notions of peace and tolerance and hope for a brighter future. For both the ship’s fans and detractors, it’s a simple message.

The neighborhood surrounding the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) buzzed last Tuesday as moderate-sized crowds mingled on Fulton Street in front of three newly unveiled public art installations. It was precisely the intended effect of BAMart:Public, an initiative to enliven underutilized public spaces with visual art (a fourth project is on view inside BAM’s Peter J. Sharp building). David Harper, the program’s curator, walked me through the installations and explained the project’s genesis along the way.

Lorraine O'Grady is engaging audiences across the spectrum of Manhattan cultural institutions these days, sharing her insights as a conceptual artist and cultural critic. She’s at MoMA, at Performa, at the Whitney Biennial, at the Studio Museum, and at Alexander Gray. We spent some time looking—and listening—to find out what why she’s having such a moment.

Acquisitions of net art by the Tate Modern, the Guggenheim, and other institutions have given institutional validation to the genre, but complicated curatorial debates rage over what exactly it includes: Can it be shown on a computer in a gallery? Can it only be viewed online? Can art not based on code count as net art?

At (It’s Not) Net Art 2: Emancipate the Medium!, one panel at Art Dubai's Global Art Forum, heated debates began over nearly every aspect of the medium, from its formal qualities to its politicization and the notion that it is inherently radical. This argumentativeness is perhaps unsurprising given that the medium lacks a strict definition.

In the first of her reports from Art Dubai’s panel discussions on art and the media, Alana Chloe Esposito finds no agreement on the merits of protest documentation as art. Has contemporary art lost its political power to news photography and cell phone snapshots?